Letter to a conservative young man
A thoughtful answer to a question about politics yields some answers about life.
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by Mike Finley

Mike: I don't really think about politics much. I've grown up conservative, whatever wing that is. Right? Left? I've been around people all my life who exclusively vote Republican. I've learned not to bring up anything even remotely related to politics with certain relatives as a HEATED argument is bound to ensue. Not being a very confrontational guy, I never jump in, but still feel the bile rising when liberals start going off and saying their liberal things.

Here is the thing that troubles me though. Why is there always such a huge clash between liberals and conservatives? You could say that it is the issues, but why do liberals care about some issues and conservatives care about others? And as rational (I hope!) human beings, can't people just discuss the issues and figure out what works best? Even describing the differences in broad strokes isn't satisfying. Big government; little government--that sounds more like an issue than a cause. I would guess that there is some root cause that determines whether someone is liberal or conservative, right or left. Some sinister brainwashing of the entire country, perhaps? I've never really dug into politics so there isn't much that I can say about it and could very well be missing the point entirely. I just wonder what the fundamental difference is from which comes everything we see and talk about in politics. As the Lone Liberal in a church full of conservatives I reckon that you may have at least an opinion.

Keep your boots on,

Jeremy

HANKS VERY MUCH, JEREMY. I enjoyed talking with you at the Berubes Saturday. You seem to be tracking the world around you, which I think is a foundational and admirable quality.

Politics ... it's so bad, what it does to us, that I have decided to list it in my own personal inventory as a compulsive behavior, and to combat it the same way.

Seriously ... I go to a weekly 12-step group, and I don't tell people this, but my problem isn't really drinking or gambling, it's indulging in a spectrum of angry (and once repressed, compulsive) feelings. Politics is a kind of magic mirror you hold up to yourself to feel the way you want to feel (very much like drinking or gambling or dressing up in women's clothing). I am convinced that, in cases like mine, it's often an exercise in self-flattery.

Most politics is acquired in adolescence. I remember that my mom was a member of United World Federalists in the 1950s, a group that believed that the UN should run the world. She was a social climbing liberal - a poor farmer's daughter who wanted her trendy friends to accept her. She had compassion for others but in a cartoony sort of way. She once invited a huge family of migrant workers picking potatoes in a nearby field to come to a fancy china tea party at our house. We weren't rich, but my mom was a little nuts and had strange and awkward presentiments about what to do - the big thing was showing that she was not a bigot to black and other minority people.

My father's brother was Jack Finley, who was Martin Luther King's sound man for many years. He marched at Selma. Jack was a child-man - sweet-natured, kindly, idealistic, but very compulsive and childish. He was a "political artist.' He took fantastic, historic shots of King, Jesse Jackson, and other leaders of that time (the 60s).

I think political belief mirrors self-image, and that we pursue images that seem pure and virtuous to us. I have always wished for a father figure who was not a violent, narcissistic drunk. Thus I latched onto Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Moe Udall, and Paul Tsongas as heroes - all cool, funny liberals, the dads I wished I had had.

To me, "liberals" cared about other people, and "conservatives" didn't. "Liberals" were worldly, and "conservatives" were narrow, and often religious to the point of stupidity. My arch liberal hero would be someone like Dave Dellinger of the Chicago 7, or Dr King. My arch conservative villain would be someone intransigent like Orval Faubus or Judge Scalia (who has never decided one case ever that benefited poor people. To me, he is a cardboard, 2D bad guy - always siding with power. His family growing up was authentically upper-case Fascist, pro-Mussolini, so I'm not making this up.)

So "liberalism" was a form of psycho-spiritual salvation. It met a deep need in me for "righteousness." I'm sure "conservatives" felt 100% the same way, although I am not that talented that I can say what burns in their hearts. But I suspect this: that to them, cultural conservatives (as opposed to wealthy country-club conservatives) are authentic, they are paying their dues, they are aligned with God, they are unpretentious, they are steadfast, they aren't Harvard educated snots, they love their families, they respect their leaders -- and "liberals" are none of these things. They're flakes who seem to be compassionate, but it's all an act?

I strongly wish we could trash the two labels because they constitute a political lie and they destroy any possibility of empathic discourse. I'm a traditional conservative in many ways. I'm an English major, for pete's sake - Old White Dudes Unlimited. I voted for Dole, gave money to McCain. In 1860 I would have been a Republican - anti-slavery, liberal on women's suffrage. In 1900 I would have been a Democrat - anti-child labor, pro-Immigrant. In 1940 I would have been at war, like the beautiful Hubert Humphrey, with the Dixiecrats - Jim Crow Demos who split to join Nixon's "Southern Strategy" - including Trent Lott. Today I am a Democrat - circumstances keep changing!

But my enemy is not conservatism (which is rooted in wariness of human nature) but corporate radicalism (rooted in laissez-faire, let-it-rip economics) - what was called fascism just before Hitler confused the term - government that works hand in glove with select large corporations, with amassed wealth. Our current government is "fascist" in the 1920s Italian sense of the word. It is a radical form of assisting the wealthy to increase and maintain economic power. This is not a good thing. It seeks to undermine democracy and turn the nation into a "market" and nothing more.

Billionaires, who understand the danger of wealth imbalance to society's fabric -- oppose this regime - Gates, Buffett, Allen, Soros, McCartney. "Mere" millionaires, who are still glorying in their tax reductions, love it.

Evangelical Christians, whom I love (I voted for two of them, Clinton once and Carter twice), have sold their virtue to the radical elements of the fascist neo-conservative movement. In return for a couple of dinky maneuvers - anti-gay marriage amendment (which will fail), and anti-partial birth abortion law (which has already been declared unconstitutional) - they get in bed with the devil. I say shame on them - they are hiding behind their innocence, which is a form of abdication of responsibility.

If the devil is alive today (and I believe he is) wouldn't be tempt people every possible way? Including manipulating them to "vote for virtue" and keep the money class on top? Honesty: will one rich family forswear an abortion for their pregnant 14 year old daughter? No. The law is only for the poor and middle classes to obey. This is why I oppose it. My wife works in a poverty clinic, and it seems very wrong to her that our country wants to only allow the wealthy to get abortions.

I don't like abortion but I hate injustice more. I am also strong for women's rights, which our church is pretty much against, so I am in open conflict with most of us on this.

My approach is to try to be suspicious of my own motives but it's not easy. Passion overflows. Much of my anger about politics is rooted in the circumstances of my life - deep down, I believe I harbor a deep psychological grievance against God, which I am praying to have taken away from me. It has to do with the death of my family when I was a boy. I am getting better, but the residue - flaming anger at the abuses of the powerful (a proxy for God) - remains. And I don't want it all whisked away - just the part that is untrue or unbalanced.

People are making a big to do about Reagan this week, but we overlook his campaign against the poor Indians of Central America. Over a million Guatemalans and Salvadorans were butchered by death squads during his term - which he funded as part of his Cold War anti-Communist fervor. Indeed, he knowingly sold weapons to an enemy nation (Iran) to finance these killings.

So, nice guy, sure. And it's fine to be anti-Communist; but it's not fine to skin teenage girls alive. Did Reagan know? I think he turned a blind eye to these things - and today we call this blindness "moral clarity," same as we call the systematic abuses of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan "anomalous" (and sad to say, they are not, they are the product of our hysteria and overreaction to 9/11, a terrible thing, but NOTHING compared to the slaughter of the 600,000 Maya in Guatemala, whose crime was learning to read and write, and thus to comprehend their own oppression.)

Well, as Reagan would say, there I go again.

This is a long conversation, Jeremy. Suffice to say, thanks for being interested, and please pray for me to be wiser about this stuff. I want to be right with God and not be a prick about politics. But I don't want to sell out to goons and sadists, either, as so many evangelicals seem to delight in doing.

Mike